Tag Archives: fundraising

We got a pretty good response last week, so with today being Valentine’s Day, let’s try and share some more of the love.

As we stated before, the goal here is to help each other find projects that could a financial boost. We’re looking for stuff of the Indiegogo/Kickstarter variety: academic, artistic, literary, musical, cinematic, etc.

From time to time, you’ve seen us shine the spotlight on fundraisers for various projects. Now, it’s your turn.

The rules are simple: In the comments, drop us a link and a quick description for a project you think merits backing; it can be related to academia, art, literature, music, moviemaking — anything artistic, in other words. The idea is to get as many eyes on as many endeavors as possible, and hopefully as much help, as well.

Fernandes, as you may or may not know, is a Brazilian SFF writer who makes a living as a professor of Creative Writing and translator at a university in São Paulo. I follow him on Twitter, and he blogs at The Cogsmith.

JG: How did the anthology idea come about?

FF: I had been thinking of editing an anthology of Latin American stories for a while now. By the end of 2009, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer invited me to be assistant editor for Latin America in their awesome Best American Fantasy collection. Unfortunately, the BAF ended in 2010, just before the volume four, which would have been my debut. In 2011, however, I started thinking that I could at the very least try to edit an anthology of Brazilian science fiction in English to make it available to the English-speaking public. I managed to get a few stories, but most of the authors couldn’t translate them neither rewriter them in English, and I was too busy to do it all by myself. Then I saw an ad in the Outer Alliance list published by Djibril al-Ayad, creator and editor of The Future Fire, asking for guest editors for two special issues. I saw that as an opportunity–but this time not only for Brazil or Latin America. I thought I could shout out louder. So I drafted a project about colonialism and sent it his way. He liked it and here we are now.

JG: What is your vision for it?

FF: I thought of the particular place humanity is in right now. We are still at war in many places around the world, but something is a-changing: the socialist Second World has pretty much ended almost 25 years ago, and the First World and the Third World are, if not changing places, are definitely suffering major alterations in their structure. I think it’s past time we discuss that in our fiction, and what fiction suits best the discussion of the zeitgeist–the spirit of times, our times and the times to come–than science fiction? A few authors are doing it now (Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Neal Stephenson, Alastair Reynolds, and Ian McDonald come to mind–but guess what? All male Anglos. I want to make clear I have absolutely nothing against them or their works–I love them all, and I find them true trailblazers. I just wanted to see more people from different countries, speaking different languages, from different ethnicities, genders, writing about the same issues. Or similar issues from their own POVs.

Soon-to-be-made indie film Farah Goes Bang, co-written by Laura Goode and Meera Menon, follows three friends in their twenties–one Persian, one Indian, and one white–who hit the road to campaign for John Kerry in 2004. One of them is also on a quest to lose her long-lingering virginity along the way. The writers describe the film as “a valentine to contemporary feminism, youth in revolt, and the passionate politics of idealism,” but most of all it represents the pair’s common “bottom line” in storytelling, one not very popular in mainstream media today: to represent women in art as women see themselves in life.

Despite their common interests, Meera and Laura hail from very different backgrounds and artistic points of view. A filmmaker born and raised in New Jersey, Meera is a first-generation Indian American of Malayali descent; her father, Vijayan Menon, is a prominent film producer in her family’s home state of Kerala. Laura, a novelist, poet, essayist, and dramatist of primarily Italian and Irish descent, grew up outside Minneapolis, MN; her 2011 young-adult novel Sister Mischief, examines, among other things, this white-dominated suburban setting.

Here they discuss their different approaches to representation and how the script for Farah Goes Bang tries to build bridges, and how you can help make this film a reality.Continue reading →

Race, Culture, and Identity in a Colorstruck World

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Racialicious is a blog about the intersection of race and pop culture. Check out our daily updates on the latest celebrity gaffes, our no-holds-barred critique of questionable media representations, and of course, the inevitable Keanu Reeves John Cho newsflashes.

Latoya Peterson (DC) is the Owner and Editor (not the Founder!) of Racialicious, Arturo García (San Diego) is the Managing Editor, Andrea Plaid (NYC) is the Associate Editor. You can email us at team@racialicious.com.